Chile: The Forgotten Past is Full
of Memory

excerpted from the book

State Terrorism and the United
States

From Counterinsurgency to the
War on Terrorism

by Frederick H. Gareau

Clarity Press, 2004, paper

p68
The CIA revealed that as early as 1964 American businessmen with
interests in Chile offered the agency money to prevent Allende
from being elected... The agency refused the money, but advised
the businessmen how they could funnel the funds to opposition
candidates. It admitted secretly creating political action programs,
political workshops, and "mechanisms" for 'placements"
in radio and news media, and conducting what it chose to call
"spoiling operations" against the Allende forces. "The
overwhelming objective-firmly rooted in the policy of the period
was to discredit Marxist-leaning political leaders, especially
Dr. Salvador Allende, and to strengthen and encourage their civilian
and military opponents to prevent them from assuming power. "

Nonetheless on September 4, 1970 Allende
was successful in the general elections in his third bid for the
presidency of Chile. While he garnered only 36.2 percent of the
vote, it was a three-cornered race, and he received a plurality
of the popular vote. The constitution of Chile required congressional
approval before a plurality winner could assume office. On September
15, 1970 six weeks before the Chilean Congress was scheduled to
vote, "President Nixon informed the DCI (the Director of
Central Intelligence) that an Allende regime in Chile would not
be acceptable to the United States. He instructed the CIA to prevent
Allende from coming to power or unseat him...

p68
"Under 'Track II' of the strategy the CIA sought to instigate
a coup to prevent Allende from taking office after he won a plurality
in the(4 September) election(and before... the Chilean Congress
reaffirmed his victory.') Numerous contacts were made with key
military and national police officers to persuade them to carry
out a coup. The U.S. Army's attaché was placed under the
operational control of the agency, and he relayed similar messages
to his military contacts. Four CIA officers were sent under non-official
cover to meet with the most sensitive of the Chilean military
officers who were plotting the coup. The agency worked with three
groups of plotters. All three conspiring groups agreed that any
successful coup would require the kidnapping of General Rene Schneider,
a staunch defender of constitutional government. Although the
agency agreed with this assessment and although it provided weapons
to two of the groups, it could find no evidence that the agency
or any of the groups sought to kill the general. He was mortally
wounded by one of the groups that supposedly sought to kidnap
him, evidently by the group led by General Viaux. General Schneider's
death shocked the armed forces and those civilians intent on a
coup, and plans for military action were put on hold.

On October 24, 1970 the Chilean Congress
approved of Allende by a vote of 153 to 35, and soon thereafter
he was inaugurated. Allende himself was a socialist and an admitted
Marxist, and his coalition government included other leftists
and the communist party. The CIA report reveals that the coming
to power of this coalition government resulted in a shift in Washington's
policy. Its long-term objective then became to keep the opposition
active so that it would prove victorious in the 1976 election.
The CIA's role "was primarily to provide funds and influence
opposition political parties." It supported two conservative
parties, and it continued its propaganda activities, inter alia
by "media placements" in support of opposition parties
and against the Allende regime. Covert funding during the Allende
regime totaled $6.5 million. But a strategy of encouraging, supporting,
or perhaps even inaugurating a coup was not ruled out. "The
CIA was instructed to put the U.S. Government in a position to
take future advantage of either a political or military solution
to the Chilean dilemma, depending on how developments unfolded."

Asserting that it did not instigate the
successful coup of September 11, 1973, the agency [CIA] allowed
that it was aware of military coup-plotting. Indeed, it maintained
ongoing intelligence collection relations with some of the plotters,
and it "probably appeared to condone" the coup. If the
CIA document was hesitant to state bluntly that Washington's policy
was to support the coup, the issue was cleared up in a statement
by Secretary of State Cohn Powell in February of 2003. While trying
to pressure Chile, then serving as a non-permanent member of the
Security Council, to support a resolution calling for a war on
Iraq, Powell admitted that encouraging the coup that brought Pinochet
to power for 17 years was "not part of American history we
are proud of. Santiago expressed pleasure at hearing the remark.

p69
Making the Chilean Economy "Scream"

Washington's efforts to undermine the
Allende government were not confined to the activities of the
CIA. These efforts contained a large economic component. As the
architect of "Nixon's secret policy" toward Allende,
[Henry] Kissinger originated the idea of an economic blockade
The prospects for its success were good. since Chile depended
upon the United States for supplies for its industries.

p70
In contrast to its economic policy toward Santiago, Washington
did not reduce military aid and sales nor curtail its military
training program during the Allende years. Actually, both were
increased. The number of Chilean officers trained at the School
of the Americas in Panama increased from 63 to 107 in the period
from 1966 to 1969.13 During the Allende years from 1970 to 1973
this number increased from 181 to 257. The number for 1974 was
260. Military assistance and sales totaled 3.2 million in 1970,
increased to 8.9 million in 1971, and reached 13,5 million in
1972.

The purposes of the aid and training went
beyond the functional and the technical, however, to include the
establishment and maintenance of fraternal relations between the
personnel of the two military establishments. In the words of
Colonel Narin, the director of the School of the American Fleet,
"We are in contact with our graduates and they are in contact
with us." Cooperation between Washington's and Santiago's
military intelligence services was maintained and Washington's
military attaches continued to have access to the highest Chilean
officials.

p71
On the morning of the coup President Allende arrived early at
work in the La Moneda Palace, because he had been forewarned of
troop movements in Valparaiso. At dawn the palace was surrounded
by police forces and at ten A.M. by tanks from an armored regiment.
After capturing a local radio station, the junta used it to announce
its first decrees and to warn that the palace must be evacuated
by 11 A. M. Otherwise, the palace would be bombed. The first decree
of the junta was read by a military spokesman who said in part:

First, the President of the Republic
must immediately surrender his office to the armed forces and
the carabineros of Chile. Second, the armed forces and carabineros
are united in order to begin the historic and responsible mission
to fight for the liberation of the Fatherland, and to prevent
our country from falling beneath the Marxist yoke.

Allende gave those in the palace the choice
of staying or leaving. His closest aides, his security guards,
and officials of the investigative police chose to stay. The bombing
started at 11:52, and this set the palace on fire. Allende did
have a chance to address the nation on television:

This will be my last opportunity to speak
to you.. Given these developments I can only say to the workers:
I am not going to resign. Set upon a historic path, I will pay
for my loyalty to the people with my life ...These are my final
words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain.

These were, indeed, his final words to
the nation. According to the Report of the Chilean National Commission
on Truth and Reconciliation, he committed suicide a few hours
after the successful coup to overthrow him. With Allende's death
went the demise of what has often been called the first freely
elected Marxist president. Also battered, if not murdered, was
the Chilean myth that the inhabitants of this South American country
are the "Englishmen of Latin America." According to
the myth, political violence, torture, and massive human rights
violations are reserved for the "banana republics."
The national anthem of

Chile adds to the myth with the claim
that the country is an asylum for the oppressed. This is, or was,
a South American variation of the myth of national "exceptional
ism," still in vogue in the United States.

p71
The Pinochet Regime

The Pinochet dictatorship was installed
in 1973, and it lasted until 191 "Actually, however, what
emerged was a new institution, unprecedented in Chile: the President
of the Republic/Commander in Chief." Pinochet ruled and administered
the country and presided over the junta. Without him no laws could
be passed, nor could the constitution be amended. He was also
the commander in chief of the army, and his powers were enhanced
by the fact that the country was in a state of emergency during
practically the whole period. He took over the executive branch,
dissolved the legislative branch, and prohibited leftists parties
in 1973 and all other parties in 1977.

Pinochet preserved the judiciary, but
the judiciary did not preserve the human rights of Chileans-this,
because this branch of government lacked the necessary dedication
to human rights and because of the restrictions put on it by the
army. Most members of the Supreme Court sympathized with the dictatorship.
The dictatorship issued decrees, for example, forbidding habeas
corpus for political crimes. The media were censored, recalcitrant
newspapers were closed, and some journalists disappeared. Much
of the media preferred to stay open by engaging in self-censorship.
The class bias of the regime was shown by its treatment of labor
unions. A decree of December 10, 1973 ordered labor unions to
refrain from all political activity. Meetings were allowed only
if they were of an informational nature or if they were concerned
with the internal management of the institutions. Moreover, the
nearest police station had to be notified in writing two days
in advance of such meetings. The president/commander in chief
accepted an economic plan for the country formulated by a young
group of liberal and neoliberal economists who had done post graduate
work in economics at American universities, notably the University
of Chicago. Pinochet imposed the plan against all who resisted
it, "granting its authors the power, support, and time they
said they needed to apply it." The Pinochet years thus represented
a period of right-wing dictatorship, motivated by an anti-labor
bias and the class struggle.

p74
... the guerrillas were responsible for a total of 99 victims
during the three periods into which the commission divided its
study, i.e., during the entire Pinochet dictatorship. These 99
victims constitute 4.3 percent of the total victims. The government
was responsible for the remaining 2180 victims, 95.7 percent of
the total. The Pinochet years appear to be much better described
as a period of government repression rather than guerrilla terrorism,
similar to Guatemala and El Salvador. The evidence presented in
the report undermines the Pinochet government's attempt to rationalize
its repressive behavior by contending that it was engaged in counterinsurgency
warfare, an unorthodox type of warfare ...

National Intelligence Directorate (DINA)

The commission singled out a group within
the military whose ideas and activities had a singular impact
upon the human rights record of the Pinochet regime. Composed
mostly of army majors and colonels, it was remarkably coherent
in its anti-communist sentiments and later in its activities as
well. Formed on the day of the coup, it was called the "colonels
committee." It functioned for a few weeks after that in the
Military Academy, but it became the "DINA Commission"
in November 1973, and in June 1974 it was upgraded to the level
of a government agency and called the National Intelligence Directorate
(DINA). An army officer, Lieutenant Colonel Juan Manuel Contreras,
formulated the plan for its creation as a government institution,
and he served as its head during the three years of its existence."
All three military branches gave their approval prior to its formation,
and the police provided personnel as well. Civilians were hired,
but the highest positions were held by army officers, and a few
by navy and air force officers. The commission revealed that doctors
were hired not merely to take care of sick victims, but also to
assess the ability of victims to withstand torture.

DINA was an intelligence organization,
responsible for collecting information, but it was also an operational
institution. It was the agency directly responsible for most of
the political repression that occurred during its life span, during
the most oppressive years of the dictatorship.

p77
Lieutenant Colonel Contreras, the founder and head of DINA, had
tended the Army Career Officers School in Fort Belvoir, Virginia
for two years .41 it . was not unusual for a Chilean officer to
attend a military school in the United States. The CIA publication
CIA Activities in Chile revealed that: "Thousands of Chilean
military officers came to the United States for training, which
included presentations on the impact of global communism on their
own country. 1143 A sizeable number attended the School of the
Americas when it was located in Panama. Between 1966 and 1974
this number totaled 1,437.

p78
Evaluating the Extent of Washington's Complicity

Washington's training of thousands of
military personnel from Chile who later committed state terrorism
again makes Washington eligible for the charge of accessory before
the fact to state terrorism. The CIA's close relationship during
the height of the terror to Contreras, Chile's chief terrorist
(with the possible exception of Pinochet himself), lays Washington
open to the charge of accessory during the fact. That he was a
graduate of an American military school and received at least
one payment from the agency makes the charge more plausible.

But the extent of Washington's role was
further clarified, albeit tangentially, as the commission examined
the ideology of DINA. Since the commission did not find a written
statement of the ideology of DINA, it sought to deduce it from
DINA's behavior and from the information it received from outside
the country. Of course, DINA was anti-communist. But the commission
went beyond this obvious observation. It identified two ideologies
which motivated DINA-a lesser one, national security and a major
one, counterinsurgency doctrine. It characterized national security
as a distorted doctrine, one that puts this value above ethics.
Little more than a revival of what was once called raison d'etat,
in extreme cases it allows the rights of the individual to be
sacrificed by reason of an alleged general national interest.
The commission pointed out that the counterinsurgency doctrine
developed in Latin American against a background that featured
the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and guerrilla
warfare. Guerrilla focos (units or foci) were to be established
by the likes of Guevara in many rural and urban settings in all
of Latin America. There was also to be a coordinating agency for
these guerrilla focos, either in Havana or Moscow. In this view,
counterinsurgency would establish its own focos in these settings.
Then, in one of its few references to the United States, the commission
mentioned almost in passing what is in fact a major indictment
of Washington's role, not simply in training generations of officers,
but in supervision of their activities related to the actual suppression
of purported insurgencies in Chile and elsewhere. The commission
noted that their anticipation of insurgency:

led a number of governments, and especially
that of the United States, to start a counterinsurgency drive.
Just like the focos, counterinsurgency was both local in nature
in each country and centralized through a degree of coordination
between all Latin American countries. The United States took charge
of the over all coordination, [italics added] and to that end
it took advantage of the fact that generations of officers from
the various Latin American countries were passing through its
military training schools each year.

Washington's service as the overall coordinator
of state terrorism in Latin America demonstrates the enthusiasm
with which Washington played its role as an accomplice to state
terrorism in the region. It was not a reluctant player. Rather
it not only trained Latin American governments in terrorism and
financed the means to commit terrorism; it also encouraged them
to apply the lessons learned to put down what it called "the
communist threat." Its enthusiasm extended to coordinating
efforts to apprehend those wanted by terrorist states who had
fled to other countries in the region. This much is known. How
centralized the coordination was is a more difficult question
to answer. How much influence was exercised by Washington in the
decision to commit terrorism is a much harder question to answer.
Of course, the actual commission of state terrorist acts was in
the hands of terrorist governments and their agents. The evidence
available leads to the conclusion that Washington's influence
over the decision to commit these acts was considerable.

p80
Just as counterinsurgency doctrine is designed to fight the guerrilla,
so counter-terror doctrine is designed to fight the terrorist.
Both rationalize the use by "our side" of what are said
to be the terrorist tactics of the adversary. Guerrilla warfare,
so the counterinsurgency doctrine alleged, is not a minor type
of conflict as its name implies in Spanish or Portuguese. (After
all, the word is the diminutive for guerra, whose meaning in both
of these languages is war.)) It is genuine warfare. Moreover,
its practitioners are said to be hypocritical in that they do
not declare it, or they even disavow it. The governments that
promote it deny that they are in any way responsible for it. Guerrillas
are seen as showing no respect for the laws of war or for ethical
principles: they take no prisoners, and they torture, practice
terrorism, and destroy productive property. Governments must be
made to understand the threat posed by the guerrillas and to confront
guerrilla warfare with its own methods lest these governments
place themselves at a disadvantage. The fundamental values of
the country, the nation, and the state are at stake.

p80
When high level officials in Santiago realized the harm that DINA
was causing the regime, it was terminated, and a new agency was
put in place to fulfill the same function. On August, 13 1977
DINA was replaced by the National Center for Information (CNI),
which took over the staff, the buildings, and the other property
of its predecessor, but was put under the authority of the Interior
Minister rather than the junta .411 CNI was mandated to gather
intelligence, but also to safeguard national security and the
established institutional order. If DINA was the chief instrument
of terrorism during its existence, so was CNI from its birth to
he end of the Pinochet dictatorship ...

p81
Terror and Torture by the Pinochet Regime

The CNI's use of torture was systematic,
but more selective than that of DINA, an agency that tortured
practically everyone that passed through its hands. Torture in
its hands continued to be mainly the use of electric shocks especially
on the sensitive parts of the body, beatings of all kinds, and
threatened asphyxiation through emersion in water. Perhaps because
it initiated the practice of torture immediately after the coup
or because it did more of it, the commission spent more space
on the torture activities of DINA than on those of the CNI. The
former institution included, along with beatings, humiliations,
insults, degrading conditions of confinement, being held blindfolded,
and being fed poorly for an extended period. Electric shocks were
customarily administered with the help of the "grill,"
a metal bed spring to which the victim was tied. The electricity
was applied to the sensitive parts of the body, favorite spots
being the lips and the genitalia. By having a close relative or
a favorite friend tortured close by, perhaps in the same J bunk
bed, a psychological dimension would be added to the operation.

p81
The Chilean government carried out its executions principally
by the of knives and automatic rifles with silencers. Most of
the prisoners who had disappeared were taken from their secret
locations and executed close to the places where their bodies
were to be buried or thrown.° The commission added that witnesses
testified to another method of execution. It 'consisted in taking
prisoners out while asleep or drowsy from heavy sedation and putting
them onto a helicopter and dropping them into the ocean after
first cutting their stomachs open with a knife to keep the bodies
from floating."

p85
Throughout the post-coup period, the CIA collected and disseminated
extensive reporting concerning human rights issues in Chile to
the intelligence and policy communities. Washington thus was aware
of the state terrorism and other forms of government repression
committed by the Pinochet regime.

p86
Given that they knew about the terrorism of this regime, what
did the elites in Washington during the Nixon and Ford administrations
do about it? The CIA report stated:

After Pinochet came to power, senior
policy makers appeared reluctant to criticize human rights violations,
taking to task US reacted by increasing diplomats urging greater
attention to the problem. US military assistance and sales grew
significantly during the years of greatest human rights abuses.
According to a previously released Memorandum of Conversation,
Kissinger in June 1976 indicated to Pinochet that the US Government
was sympathetic to his regime, although Kissinger advised some
progress in human rights in order to improve Chile's image in
the US Congress.

The elites in Washington reacted by increasing
U.S. military assistance and sales to the state terrorists, by
covering up their terrorism, by urging U.S. diplomats to do so
also, and by assuring the terrorists of their support, thereby
becoming accessories to state terrorism before, during, and after
the fact. The report of the Commission on Truth and Reconciliation
painted a similar picture of Washington's early policy ...

p87
The Republican administrations of Nixon, Ford, and Reagan were
more supportive of the Pinochet dictatorship than the Democratic
administration of Carter. Ensalaco points out that the Nixon and
Ford administrations took no action to punish the Pinochet dictatorship
for its human rights violations. 70 In fact they circumvented
the efforts of Congress to curtail economic and military assistance
to Chile.

p89
Before Reagan appointed Jeanne Kirkpatrick as the United States
ambassador to the United Nations, she had become famous for her
benign view of rightwing dictators. In a visit to Chile in August
1981, she refused to meet with Jaime Castillo, the director of
the Chilean Human Rights Commission. During the Reagan years the
ban on military assistance and sales to Santiago was lifted, and
joint exercises with the Chilean navy were resume.

p89
Although they are purported to be standard bearers of democracy,
France, the United Kingdom, and Israel were suppliers of military
hardware to the Pinochet dictatorship. Israel was included, because
other research has shown that Israel often supplies aid to rightwing
dictatorships and is the country that votes most often with Washington
in the General Assembly. The seven states chosen as the standard
for upholding human rights were found in the study of Jack Donnelly
entitled International Human Rights. He discovered that this type
of state is staunch in its support of traditional human rights,
and is also hospitable to the idea of accepting economic rights
as human rights. The seven states are Canada, Denmark, Finland,
Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. Other evidence that
at least the Netherlands and the three Scandinavian states Norway,
Sweden, and Denmark should be eligible for nomination as good
world citizens is provided by the level of their contributions
to third world development. They were the only countries in 2002
that had fulfilled their promise of providing 0.7 percent of their
gross domestic product for aid to such development. Washington
ranked 22nd on the list, contributing 0.1 percent of its gross
domestic product to this cause.

p91
For years, the Pinochet dictatorship engaged in a sustained and
deliberate campaign of a physical and psychological nature whose
purpose was to intimidate and coerce victims by causing them intense
fear, anxiety, apprehension, panic, dread, and/or horror. The
terrorism was under the overall supervision of General Pinochet
himself, assisted at the height of the terror by his right hand
man, General Contreras and systematically applied by the state
for political ends. A measure of this terror was the means adopted
for "destroying a political party" --not merely by the
destruction of the party's structure but by targeting and killing
the party's activists in order to coerce and intimidate not only
those party stalwarts who survived direct terrorist attacks, but
also other less avid members and the public at large.

To what extent was the terror essentially
state terror committed by the government or private terror committed
by the guerrillas? The commission found that the former was the
case, not the latter. Similar to the commissions in Guatemala
and El Salvador, the data gathered indicated that the government
was responsible for 95.7 percent of the victims identified, the
guerrillas for the remaining 4.3 percent. Moreover, the commission
concluded that those who were killed and disappeared were overwhelmingly
leftists and guerrillas, which suggests that the perpetrators
were predominately from the other end of the ideological spectrum.
A further breakdown of the victims

p92
During its campaign of state terrorism, Chile received economic
and military aid and diplomatic support from Washington. Military
aid was significantly increased during the height of this campaign.
The CIA publication cited above affirmed that Washington trained
thousands of the Chilean military and that the training included
the charge of the possible dire impact of global communism upon
their country. Other sources indicated that this training was
often in counterinsurgency warfare and that this prepared the
students for the terror that they later committed. Recruits were
taught that guerrillas show no respect for the laws of war or
for ethical standards, took no prisoners, tortured and practiced
terrorism. The recruits were taught to confront guerrillas with
what were purported to be their own methods, lest they place themselves
at a disadvantage. Gradually, the lesson was learned: ethical
standards have no place in this work.